Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works at Cheim & Read

Installation View

I thought I just loved her spiders, but in fact I found Louise Bourgeois' stitchings rather touching variations upon themselves and 'woman's work.' These abstract drawings are made from scraps of clothes and other domestic material that Bourgeois had hoarded over the years. Per usual, Cheim and Reed has done a lovely job with its exhibition Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works. The pieces are perfect sketches in themselves, but seen as a series they make a much greater impression that individually.

Part of Eugenie Grandet, 2009

Part of Eugenie Grandet, 2009

Part of Eugenie Grandet, 2009

Untitled, 2010

The Waiting Hours, 2007

Part of The Waiting Hours

Up through June 25 at Cheim and Read.

Ying Li at Lohin Geduld

Installation View

Better late than never. I saw the Ying Li exhibition at Lohin Geduld this Saturday, the last day it was up as it turns out. Tending toward the small in size, Ying Li thickly painted abstractions are closely painted, dense colorful works. These scenes are recognizable for the most part and common place: trees, houses, and melting snow.

By The Porch

By the Porch is a small 12 x 12 piece that is my favorite of the show. I liked the contrast of smooth almost sheer light blue background upon which the yellow tree thickly stood and how the globs of color hung at the top.

Melting

I fell for her thick and gestural way of applying the paint, and the magical way the density of color resolved itself into suggestive scenes. The materiality of the paint is paramount in all of these.

Window on Town of Tilting

[Was] up at Lohin Geduld Gallery through May 21. More on the artist's webpage.

Richard Tuttle at Pace Gallery

Installation View

What's the Wind is a collection of seven new sculptures that artist Richard Tuttle calls 'systems,' and this description makes some sense after seeing the delicate balance of discrete, rough hewn elements. The disparity of parts adds some whimsy as do the simple colors and forms. Existing within the wooden platforms, the pieces create an environment almost like a ecosystem in a terrarium. I expected the parts to move like a Jean Tingley sculpture, but alas, they are frozen in a system that does not move, and is in fact dead. 

So what are these systems we are looking at? The press release describes them as "intensely self-referential," but perhaps we can deduce something by the helpfully descriptive names if not the works themselves.

System 4, Hummingbird, 2011

The title Hummingbird suggests a flurry of intense movement that turns into a blur of motion. Here we have a duct tape spire rising high over an internal core of small parts flanked by two enormous boards. Or, we have a long beak, small fat body, and two strong wings keeping the hummingbird afloat.

Detail of System 4, Hummingbird

The body of the sculpture is open, and these little circles and plinths seem to me like they should be free moving rather than fixed.

System 3, Measurement, 2011

Measurement has large, candy colored suspended balls hovering over a circle. Here the fixed structure works to create tension as the balls seem to defy gravity. I had the rather more unfortunate impression of a banana split melting into a waiting mouth. Off hand, I'd say the ice cream isn't going to fit in the "mouth" below, if that was what Tuttle was trying to measure.

Richard Tuttle's Whats the Wind up at Pace Gallery through July 22.

Discover the Lukhang Murals at the Rubin Museum of Art

Potola Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

Hidden in the Potola Palace is the secret Lukhang Temple. Amazingly preserved, this temple is a unique expression of Tantric Buddhist art historically available only to the Dalai Lama and his retinue for deep meditation and closed off to the public. The current Dalai Lama has lifted the silk curtains so to speak, and in addition to allowing visitors has allowed the detailed wall murals to be photographed. Currently at the Rubin Museum of Art you can see the Lukhang Murals even better than you can in the actual temple thanks to new photographic methods by Thomas Laird and Clint Clemens.

A separate room at the museum displays life size, high resolution pigment prints placed similarly to how they appear in the walls of the temple itself, and handily for me are accompanied by audio recordings that detail at least some of what is going on in these complex scenes. The 18th c. wall paintings illustrate the Dalai Lama's path to enlightenment, and are unusual because these mystical teachings of Tantric Buddhism tend to be passed by whisper rather than openly expressed. 

Detail of East wall showing two Mahasiddha

They are also remarkable for their color and complexity, and the sense of order maintained despite the activity of all the tiny figures. While the recording only touch upon the surface of what is going on in each panel, nonetheless it provides a great and enticing background. With such expressive figures and scenes, I found my imagination going into overdrive as I examined them, and I had to promise myself I would come back for a second look.

While I imagine these setting isn't quite as awe-inspiring as ascending by wooden ladder to this hidden secret in the Dalai Lama's palace in Tibet, it's certainly more accessible. More information here: 
http://hem.bredband.net/ritnyb/lukhang.html
http://www.asianart.com/articles/baker/index.htmll

McQueen's Savage Beauty at the Met

Organized by The Costume Institute and on at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through July 31. The installation of this exhibition was fantastically done (in both senses of the word). More here.

Today is National Doodle Day

....and I have nothing to show for it. Yet.

But Jeff Bridges, sketch above, and other celebrities do, and they are auctioning off their pieces on Ebay today.

More about Doodle Day here, or check out JafaBrit's blog where I first saw this and see what doodle she's come up with.

Golden buddha

I got inspired at the Rubin (and invited into a sculpture sessions that I suspect was intended  for children) and so made this little Buddha man to bring home with me. Normally they say feet of clay, but here we have hands of clay, a pipecleaner for support, and a lot of gold glitter. He will probably just remain a common household god.

The lotus pose of the Buddha Shakyamuni, below, from the Rubin collection looks far more perfect, as it does in most other respects.

Buddha Shakyamuni from northwestern Nepal (Khasa Malla rule) from the 14th century. It is made of gilt copper alloy with inlay. Rubin Museum of Art.

In other news, people seem to be doing precarious things outside my 20th floor office window.

Body Language: Photographs by Thomas Kelly at the Rubin

Thomas Kelly, Smoking Sadhu (2000)

Body Language: The Yogis of India and Nepal up through July 4  is a fascinating photograph exhibition in the lower level of the Rubin Museum of Art with prints from Thomas Kelly, an American photographer who has lived and worked in Nepal for many years. This collection of images documents wandering Hindu ascetics called Sadhus, and notably these men and woman paint their bodies in striking colors as they emulate their chosen deities. The images of these naked and/or colorfully painted people with matted hair are beautiful, and the Rubin Museum provides context on these remarkable looking people. The exterior appearance is just one way in which the Sadhu takes on the attribute of the deity he is emulating, which becomes the goal and process of his whole life.

Installation View of  Body Language, Rubin Museum of Art

Kelly writes on his website of sadhus in respect to his book Sadhus: The Great Renouncers: 

     In my adopted home of Kathmandu, some sadhus survive primarily off alms made from allowing tourists to photograph them. They are a spectacle and love to play their assigned role in the illusion or drama of society. Their masks are thickly painted on their naked bodies. Sadhus have formally abandoned conventional time; their world is dense with its own complex politics, social hierarchy, taboos and customs, often making access challenging.

     Volatile and unpredictable, spontaneous photography of sadhus can actually be dangerous. You can easily be trampled or attacked if you immerse yourself in a naga baba procession after a mass Khumba Mela bathing. Or, without permission from a Mahant to work inside an Akhara, be accused of being a spy and have to answer to a Sadhu tribunal. There’s no such thing as achieving photographic acceptance within the Sadhu mandala. For me, photographing at ritual time is always the most dynamic and fluid. Once rapport has been established, a camera is tolerated, often with a sense of lila, or maya, play and illusion. It took repeated visits over many seasons and melas, to occasionally reach this level.
     My initial inexplicable attraction to the Sadhu world was mostly visual. As a photographer, I loved how they allowed their bodies to become symbols of the sacred- from walking around naked to remind us of our naked selves, to wearing ash to remind us what are bodies become, to dreadlocks to remind us of our natural wild natures devoid of social convention. Their bodies were texts, which spoke volumes regarding sacred symbolism.
     A sadhu’s body is a map of the Hindu universe, for the body is a microcosm of the cosmos. Like a canvas, the colour and painted symbols aid in purification, inspire, and remind of the timeless divine beyond body and form. The body is used to tell stories. As the sadhus works towards an egoless state, he becomes the very symbols he’s painted whether it be Shiva, Vishnu, or Rama, the colors refer to esoteric inner visions and possible alchemical states of consciousness. The real goal of a Sadhu is to achieve an attitude of non-attachment and transcendence of the physical body.

Stoppard's Arcadia on Broadway

Picture of the ending waltz (NOT from the current Broadway production)

It all ends in one swirling waltz, with both past and present people circling each other in a ring of time and thought. Indeed, Stoppard's Arcadia, currently running at the Barrymore Theater, gives the sense that time dances with itself as well. The two intertwined narratives, one in the 1830s and one in the present day, step around each other in the space of an old British country house, never touching except perhaps if the present day inhabitants feel a ghost-like chill as they research the earlier characters.

Aptly played by most of the cast, except perhaps a really galling and annoying portrayal of Bernarad Nightengale by Billy Cudrup that toned itself down in the second half, the lines were spoken well. (The NY Times disagrees here.) Stoppard loads his lines down with so many -isms that are then undercut by so many comedic lines that just getting them out naturally and so that the audience can follow deserves applause. The characters themselves are warm and human, if not particularly fleshed out. In their limited roles, the mouthing of Stoppard's suddenly heart-wrenching epigrams, full of yearning and paradox, can seem a little startling.

Many of Stoppard's plays have been history lessons as well, bringing us into the intellectual thoughts and mores of an era. Nothing revolutionary happens here, and a quick explanation of plot or purpose is hard to come by for Arcadia. Set in Sidley Park, an English country house, the research of two modern scholars and the house's current residents are juxtaposed with the lives of those who lived there 180 years earlier. In the present, writer Hannah Jarvis is researching a hermit who once lived on the grounds of the estate and Bernard Nightingale, a literature professor, is investigating a possible connection to the life of Lord Byron. As their investigations unfold, helped by Valentine Coverly, a post-graduate student in mathematical biology, the truth about the 1800s era residents Thomasina Coverly, the daughter of the house, and her tutor Septimus Hodge, is gradually revealed.

What the actors do very well is make the search for knowledge and truth a passionate, heartfelt affair. The possible futility of it lends pathos to the character's individual searches. Time and Sidley Park brings them together for a brief moment. Altogether, a little wilder than the average Bristish country house story.

Tete casquee

Tete Casquee, 1933. Bronze

My favorite piece from the Gagosian Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L'Amour Fou exhibition seemed to have little to do with Marie-Thérèse: the Tête casquée (1933) bronze head of a warrior is charming, a little goofy even, but fantastic. (It is also apparently under copyright protection in the US, because heaven forbid my blog show a small, low-res image of a famous Picasso sculpture without a 'gettyimages' tag over it. I mean, we all have to keep our standard up or soon the rabble would be sharing images of god-knows-what important sculpture.)

Luckily MoMA is a little freer with an image of a plaster cast of the same work, which shows the wonderful face of the soldier better:

Head of a warrior, Boisgeloup, 1933. Plaster, metal, and wood

I hope the inclusion of this piece wasn't meant to be a riff on Marie-Thérèse's Roman nose?

Picasso's Muse Marie-Thérèse Explored at Gagosian

Marie-Thérèse Walter was Picasso's lover, if not his wife, for most of her life. The exhibition Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L'Amour Fou up at Gagosian through June 25th is a museum-quality exploration of Picasso's many iterations of the blonde, Grecian-nosed woman using works borrowed from private collections and prestigious museums. The likelihood of seeing such a gathering, especially some of the privately owned works again is rare, a reason in itself to visit.

The works themselves are of mixed quality, but there are some truly fantastic pieces in themselves. What I enjoyed even more was the story the show told; a romantic one of continuing if not untroubled love. Marie-Thérèse became Picasso's mistress at 17, bore him a child, and committed suicide after his death, 50 years after they met. He painted her throughout his life.

"I see you before me my lovely landscape MT and never tire of looking at you, stretched out on your back in the sand, my dear MT I love you. MT my devouring rising sun. You are always on me, MT mother of sparkling perfumes pungent with star jasmines. I love you more than the taste of your mouth, more than your look, more than your hands, more than your whole body, more and more and more and more than all my love for you will ever be able to love and I sign Picasso." - Letter to Marie-Thérèse from Picasso

A great slideshow on the WSJ site shows many of the pieces.